April, 2015
Nisan, 5775
No I
Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Rabbi Professor Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson
Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at
American Jewish University
I am delighted to be able to greet you during this first academic year for the
Zacharias Frankel College! Any day that devoted young Jews gather to learn
Torah and grow in service is a great day, but to see young Europeans dedicating
their lives in service to the Jewish community and its future is surely nothing
short of miraculous.
Already we have opened classes, nestled within the School of Jewish Theology
of the University of Potsdam. On its stately and elegant campus, a building
has been dedicated solely to the future of Jewish thought and leadership, and it
is in this fine edifice that our new rabbis will gain their training and expertise
to enable them to renew the Masorti/Conservative movement in Judaism and to
energize Jewish life on the Continent and beyond.
In partnership with the University of Potsdam and our colleagues at the
Abraham Geiger College, we have moved forward on several Faculty appointments that the two schools will share, and we have engaged the services of
two senior scholars of the international Masorti/Conservative Movement,
Rabbi Dr. Harvey Meirovich of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem and Rabbi
Dr. Joel Rembaum of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles to
teach halakhah from a Masorti/Conservative perspective. Our local colleague,
Rabbi Gesa Ederberg has joined us as Director for Congregational Proficiency
to fashion an internship program for field training in Masorti/Conservative
congregations. The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University is proud to provide religious supervision and to work with the University
of Potsdam to launch this extraordinary new center for Jewish learning and
professional training.
In that regard, allow me to extend my thanks to Masorti Olami and Masorti
Europe, whose lay and professional leadership have partnered with us in
advancing the vision of a European rabbinical program to train our rabbis, as
well as to thank the European Rabbinical Assembly, namely Rabbi Jonathan
Wittenberg – its membership and its leadership, and the international Rabbinical
Assembly, particularly its Executive Vice President, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld.
It truly takes a village, and these caring rabbis, lay leaders and dedicated visionaries have worked with us to help advance our dream. Of course, without
the tireless efforts of our Executive Director, Rabbi Prof. Dr. Walter Homolka,
truly our partner every step of the way, Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, Vice Dean, and
Sandra Anusiewicz-Baer, our Co-ordinator, none of this would have ever started
at all. To them, our deepest gratitude.
These are challenging times to be Jewish, to seek Jewish wisdom, to translate
Torah into contemporary life. Yet never has the need been greater. Our ability
to rise to this challenge is limited only by our courage, our energy, and our
persistence. On behalf of the Zacharias Frankel College, I thank you for rising
with us to make sure that this challenge is successfully met, and that the greatest
days of Judaism remain in our future.
To all of you Happy Passover!
Current Affairs
Welcome from the office of the
Zacharias Frankel College
The Zacharias Frankel College is still a very
young institution. We will grow together with
our students, with the help of the faculty and
the support of the staff.
What do you need to do to become a student
for the rabbinate at the Zacharias Frankel College?
We are looking for women and men who believe
they can and will make a difference in Jewish
life in Germany or throughout Europe. We are
seeking active, creative Jewish leaders, adhering
to Jewish law and the traditions of the past
as well as embracing and challenging the future.
Our application process:
• We invite you to have preliminary discussions
with the administrative staff in Berlin as well as
the dean and associate dean of the Ziegler School
for Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. The purpose
of these meetings is to begin the mutual
evaluation of one another’s ‘fit’ for the other. • Following the preliminary interviews,
candidates are invited to submit applications
including application forms, essays, academic
records, and references.
• Based on the evaluation of the application
material, candidates will meet during the spring
semester with an admissions committee for a
conversation. • Following that discussion, the committee
will make a recommendation for admission.
This usually takes place within one week.
Studying at the Zacharias Frankel College
and the University of Potsdam:
• Classes will take place at the Zacharias Frankel
College in Berlin and at the School of Jewish
Theology in Potsdam
• Your studies consist of a B.A. and a M.A. and
one year of learning in the Conservative Yeshiva
in Jerusalem
• You will study together with students from
the Abraham Geiger College
• You will have the chance to discuss your
spiritual growth and rabbinic knowledge with
professional coaches
• Internships in Masorti congregations and
other institutions in Germany and Europe and
mentorship through experienced rabbis will
provide the skills needed for a successful rabbinate
Please contact our Co-ordinator
Sandra Anusiewicz-Baer to find out more about
the Zacharias Frankel College:
[email protected]
Greetings from Berlin!
Today I would like to tell you about my
first semester at the Zacharias Frankel
College and some of its highlights.
First of all, Berlin is an exciting
place to be with its many stimuli in
arts and culture, big city life, and
surprising diversity of Jewish life.
Studies at the Rabbinical Seminary
have been inspiring on all levels,
allowing for my own personal growth
through a balanced combination
of intellectual, spiritual and practical
learning opportunities.
The study program has been rich,
a combination of academic courses at
the School of Jewish Theology
Nizan Stein Kokin
in Potsdam, classes at the Rabbinical
Seminary itself, and my ongoing internship at Berlin‘s Masorti Synagogue
(Oranienburgerstraße). I’d like to share with you here in greater detail just a few
of my experiences:
Each semester at the Rabbinical Seminary focuses on an overarching theme
and classes are built around it. This past semester’s topic was Rosh HaShanah.
With visiting Prof. Dalia Marx from HUC-Jerusalem, we studied the
development of this holiday and its liturgy from biblical times, through the
formative period of Rabbinic Judaism, down to the modern age.
Aside from this semester’s special topic, I also enjoyed the weekly Parashat
HaShavua class, in which we studied in a Beit Midrash-style atmosphere
with several local rabbis. Learning with teachers actively engaged in their own
synagogues, we had fun delving into the intellectual and theological challenges
of the Torah while at the same time keeping to a hermeneutic perspective
applicable to the congregation that one serves.
As part of our training in homiletics, each student was charged to prepare
her first High Holiday sermon, bearing in mind the theological choreography of
the Yamim Noraim as a whole.
With Rabbi David Fine from New Jersey we studied Hilkhot Rosh HaShanah
directly from the Schulchan Aruch as well as in modern Poskim and more
recent liberal responsa literature.
In the cantorial class, led by Prof. Eliyahu Schleifer that I attended as a
visiting student, I gained new insights into the musical compositions of the great
cantors of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
And even though it’s only Pessach, I am already looking forward to
implementing many of the things I’ve learned in my year-long internship at the
local Masorti synagogue here in Berlin.
As you can see, it has been exciting and rewarding studying at the Zachrias
Frankel College!
Hag Aviv Sameah!
News from the Faculty
The Book of Jonah and its Contemporary Relevance
Harvey Meirovich is currently the Visiting Professor
in Halakhah at Potsdam. He is former dean of the
Masorti movement‘s Schechter Rabbinical Seminary
in Jerusalem. His academic career has been
paralleled by his work as a congregational rabbi in
Toronto, Canada and in London, England.
The Book of Jonah begins with two events that are unique and without parallel
in the Bible: the sending of a prophet of the Lord to proclaim imminent
punishment to a gentile city, and the prophet‘s adamant refusal to perform his
mission – to the point of preferring death. Another feature, quite bizarre, is
the writer‘s use of exaggeration in language: we as readers, for example, confront
“a great storm” (1:4); “a great fish” (2:1); the size of Nineveh and its population
is magnified (3:3). There are other strange features embedded in the storyline:
Jonah executes his mission, in two verses (3:3-4); most of the book describes
his fierce opposition to his mission. In the end, we see Jonah as a genuinely
pathetic personality who struggles valiantly, but in vain, to get God to change
his mind.
It is against this backdrop that we are entitled to ask: Why did the Rabbis
choose the Book of Jonah to be read on Yom Kippur? What are the pivotal
psychological and theological lessons of the book? There are both nationalistic
and universalistic tendencies in the story. How do these polarities influence
our making sense of Judaism today? Finally, if Nineveh represents the barbaric
Assyrian enemy, and Jonah was commanded to offer them a chance to repent,
what bearing does the story have with regard to the Jewish people‘s capacity
today to forgive its (former) enemies?
Questions We Will Ask in Our Study of Halakhah
Rabbi Joel E. Rembaum served as Senior Rabbi
of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles and held
the position of Dean of Undergraduate Studies
and Associate Professor of Jewish History at
the American Jewish University. He is a member
of the National Executive Council of the
Rabbinical Assembly. Rabbi Rembaum will follow
Harvey Meirovich as Visiting Professor in Halakhah
at Potsdam in the winter semester 2015/16.
Louis Jacobs has written, “The word halakhah, the legal side of Judaism (…)
embraces personal, social, national, and international relationships, and all the
other practices and observances of Judaism.” It has been suggested that this
word comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to walk” and refers to the religious
path on which a Jew is supposed to travel as he/she “walks” through life.
Others tell us that the term derives from an ancient Semitic word that came to
mean “fixed law.” In either case, halakhah is a large body of legal tradition
that has been evolving for millennia and continues to do so in our own day.
With that in mind, in our studies we will address such law-related questions as:
How did the prohibition of gay sexual activity, a capital crime in the Bible,
evolve into the sanctification of Jewish gay/lesbian marriage?
How did the ancient animal sacrifice worship of God develop into today’s
Jewish prayer services?
How did the farming-based Jewish economic law of antiquity become the
business-based legal system of the medieval and modern periods?
How did a handful of Biblical Sabbath regulations emerge over the centuries
as a complex code of Jewish belief and practice?
In seeking answers to these and other questions we will explore Jewish legal
sources ranging from the Bible, through the Mishnah, Talmud, medieval
commentaries and codes, and down to modern responsa. From our explorations
we will learn that halakhah has always been grounded in the belief that God is
encountered in the fullness of human life experience, and that it is the obligation
of every Jew to emulate God by living a life of k’dushah, holiness.
Comment
The importance of training Masorti Rabbis
in Europe today
Rabbi Tzvi Graetz, Executive Director of Masorti
Olami and Mercaz Olami.
IMPRINT
The mission of Masorti Olami is to develop, nurture and connect Conservative/
Masorti communities around the world. While our headquarters are in
Jerusalem, Ki MiTziyon Te’Tze Torah, our working philosophy is very grass
roots oriented. Our rabbis are usually graduates of their own home communities
and they come to serve their own people in their own languages and cultures.
So training Rabbis in Europe for Europeans is exactly what Masorti Olami and
Masorti Europe liked so much in the partnership with the Ziegler Rabbinical
School when they opened the Zacharias Frankel College in Berlin in November
2013. In our mutual vision, these rabbis get ordained and go back to their own
home communities to serve their people.
After the recent severe attacks on the Jewish communities in Belgium, France
and Denmark the need for a strong rabbinic leadership is more important
than ever. The attack was not just on Jewish institutions. It was on news agency,
artists and museums. Our Masorti movement has never cared only for Jews
and their situation in Europe, but rather for free democratic and social justice
communities in all the countries that we live in. Is not that the essence of what
Pessach is all about? To be free out of slavery, to be free in our own land, but
first to get the Torah that frees human beings and that reminds us that all human
beings deserve to be free and treated in a fair way, because we were slaves in
Egypt and therefore need to make sure what happened to us does not happen
to others.
So, the leaders that our movement will train in Europe will be capable of
taking care of their fellow Jews and their Kehillot, but in the same time take care
of the well being of the entire European community, be it Jewish and non-Jewish
that seeks to live in peace and in dialogue and towards building a just society.
Masorti Olami and Masorti Europe have more than 35 Kehillot in Europe
in nine different countries and more are joining each year. We invite each of
you who have that leadership urge to come and take care of their fellow Jews and
of the general society around them by becoming a Jewish Leader in Europe,
by becoming a Rabbi, and fulfilling the mission of bringing the word of God out
of Jerusalem, U’Dvar Adonai Me’Yeru’Shalayim.
Zacharias Frankel College
Postbox 120852 | 10598 Berlin
Phone: +49 (30) 31808160 | Fax: +49 (30) 318059110
Amtliche Anschrift: c/o Universität Potsdam
Am Neuen Palais 10, Haus 11 | 14469 Potsdam
Handelsregister HRB 26190 P | Amtsgericht Potsdam
Dean: Rabbi Brad Artson | [email protected]
Associate Dean: Rabbi Cheryl Peretz | [email protected]
Executive Director: Rabbi Prof. Dr. Walter Homolka
Contact | Co-Ordination: Sandra Anusiewicz-Baer
[email protected]